DealDey Customer Care Rant - Final Episode

This post is a sequel to two previous posts. You can find its immediate predecessor here, in which you can then find the first post of this rant series.

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On a fair note, I've decided that the first thing to mention in this final post, is that my issue with DealDey has finally been resolved, in a most favorable way. My order for the Sewing Classes deal which I had bought a few weeks ago, has been cancelled. Also, an order for a full refund of the money paid for the deal has been issued on their end. I really could not have asked for more. As a matter of fact, this is exactly what I had asked them to do for me in the very first e-mail. But they delayed; they delayed without excuse, and that is how they got me cross, so cross that I spent so much time penning down so much words.

Morning of last Thursday (20th March 2014), after still not getting any response to my e-mails, I decided to try something different. I picked up my phone, and full of despair, dialed DealDey's customer care line @ 01-4406237. After about three rings, a human being actually picked the phone. This was totally amazing, because my expectation was that I would still have to listen to their, "your call is important to us, please hold" BS for a few minutes (and worse still, at my own expense).


A young(-sounding) man named Kehinde picked up the phone. We exchanged greetings. I had no anger in my tone. Instead, with all the fluency I could muster, I recounted my negative experience with his team this week; and he listened carefully too. He asked a few questions after all my narration, which I happily answered. Just before he hung up, he promised they were going to get back to me by COB (Close of Business) of same day. After the promise, I paused for a while, then asked for his name again; like I was going to hunt him down if he failed to deliver on his promise.

Before noon of same day, I heard the very peculiar SMS tone of my mobile phone. For the love of money, I've come to develop an instinctive liking for that sound (except it comes after I just used my debit card); if you know what I mean. I rushed to pick my phone to check the SMS, and behold, it turns out that Kehinde was true to his word of few hours ago. The SMS was a credit alert from DealDey; they had returned the full amount I'd paid for the deal to my DealDey wallet. This single SMS absolutely made my day. #KehindeIsWorking

At this point, I shall be entirely honest, just because I feel the need to. The main reason that I started this whole rant was because I was afraid. The fear that I was going to lose my money (in not getting full expected value for it) pushed me to start this post. I interpreted the silence on their end (to my e-mail reminders)  as an intentional snob and I started to weigh my options.

OPTIONS
A. Storm their office and go harass the living daylight out of their customer care reps;
B. File a lawsuit
C. Call DealDey's customer care line

Doing option A is totally out of character for me; not sure I can get that angry. BTW, the place is too far away from my base to be that easy to go to. Well, option B was also not very high on my doable scale. I'm clueless and if I have any money, it's definitely not for such purposes as lawsuits. The last option did not even manage to bubble to the surface of my mind for consideration. I managed to keep it down with memories of the times in the past when all the response I ever got was: "a customer rep. will be with you shortly".

Thus, having expended all my options and feeling like my fate was in the hands of my tyrant, I decided to let out my frustration in the best way I know to: by writing. So, here we are.

Now, I'm left to wonder if my case would have been treated as at when it was, had I not made the call to Kehinde. My own belief though, is that my suspicion (that my case had been assigned low priority, or worse still, abandoned) is valid. I wonder why they would have acted that way though; I really wonder. It's not a Local Government Secretariat for Pete's sake. Okay, okay, I really should not sound this self-righteous. I know enough from my own work in App. Support to know that non-straightforward issues have a tendency to be relegated in priority. But then, in this case, I sent countless reminders.

What I'm taking away from this experience though, is that I should be more careful with my online buying decisions in the future. I tend to be very excited and almost thoughtless when I'm contemplating buying something online. Fortunately, DealDey also has a lesson to take away. I'll leave it to the analytical/observant to figure out. On a second thought, I shall give a small hint: bad press.

P.S.: One other positive takeaway for me from this ordeal is, I finally got to figure out how to send recurring/scheduled e-mails from my Gmail :-)) #boomerang. In case you're still wondering, I spammed help@dealdey.com with automatic reminders, even though not as much as I would've wanted to; the dropdown (fortunately for DealDey) had the minimum recur duration as Daily.